“What’s in there?” asked Emmie, still standing at the library door.
“Nothing much,” said Finn unconvincingly. “Let’s go and see what food’s in the kitchen. I’m starving.”
Emmie hovered there a couple of moments longer. Finn watched her, listening to the noises from inside. The faint sounds of feet moving around, the squeak of a chair. She moved a little closer. From deep within came what sounded like a shriek.
“Come on. Race you to the kitchen,” said Finn.
Emmie hurried after him.
13
“Hit me.”
Finn punched his father in the face.
“Hit me again.”
He hit him again.
“Put some anger into it.”
Finn had anger in reserve, but he had to drill deep below his exhaustion to get to it. He concentrated hard, summoning it from the depths, and swung again. His father hardly flinched. Instead, he pulled off his soft padded headgear.
“Come on, Finn, this is only training. When I was your age, I was—”
“—already fighting Legends five times my size,” Finn panted. “You’ve mentioned it once or twice before.”
He dropped his tired arms. His father gave him a poke in the chest.
“Hey!” Finn protested.
“Don’t drop your guard. Now kick me. Aim for the crotch.”
Every Friday night, one of the rooms off the long corridor would host Finn’s often futile attempts to learn how to roll over and get up again, or to shoot at a target, or to leap, or to dodge, or to leap while dodging. This room was T2, a training room bare but for the soft mats on its floor, a mirror running the length of one wall, and a box of simple gym equipment containing various items of padded gear that allowed Finn to hit his father wherever he was ordered to.
He stretched out and kicked. His father grabbed his leg and wouldn’t let go, so that Finn was left hopping on one foot, completely at his father’s mercy.
“I’ve seen ducks kick harder than that,” said his dad.
Finn had been training since he was very young, so it wasn’t that he couldn’t do any of these things. It was worse: he could almost do most of them. He could half roll, and just about jump to his feet. He could kind of shoot, nearly leap, more or less punch, and semidodge. He had strengths; it just happened that they were usually closely followed by his weaknesses.
“Let’s try the Wrigley Maneuver, Finn. It’s a simple way of not just avoiding an onrushing Legend, but of turning defense into offense.”
“That’s the same guy who ended up being known as Wrigley the Headless, right?”
“Yes, and that’s why we have to make sure to do it right. Now take this seriously, Finn. It might save your life.”
His father demonstrated the move, darting across the room, then sliding and returning to his feet, facing Finn, with his hands raised in an attack position. “Now you try it.”
Finn followed his dad’s lead, but compared to him he had the dexterity of a giraffe on ice. “I see what you’re doing. I get it,” he protested, breathing hard. “I’m just tired now.”
“Twelve-year-olds don’t get tired. When I was twelve—”
“That must have been some year. Did you save anything for when you were thirteen?”
“Look, Finn. In the classroom, you have the potential to be a very good Legend Hunter—”
“Well, bring the Legends to the classroom and I can tackle them there,” said Finn.
“If you were as quick with your hands as you are with your mouth, this wouldn’t be so difficult,” his father replied.
Finn sat on the ground, breathing hard.
“Stay fresh,” said his dad. “You can read a couple of entries in The Most Great Lives when we’re done here.”
“Ah, Dad, really?”
“You’ll be in there yourself some day.”
“So you keep saying. There won’t be much to say about me,” said Finn.
“That hasn’t stopped them before. Besides, they’re desperate for you to come through. No Completions, and no new Legend Hunter in years, means no new edition of the book. No new edition, no profits. They’re badly in need of an update.”
Finn was well aware of this alread y, thanks to the publisher’s repeated letters.
“Looking forward to your Completion,” Plurimus, Magesterius, Fortimus & Murphy wrote. “How’s the training going?” they asked. “We don’t mean to rush you, but . . . ,” and so on. Finn spent a lot of time trying not to think about the line of people who would be disappointed if he didn’t Complete. Nevertheless, his conversation with Emmie had reminded him he wouldn’t be the first family problem.
“Dad, what really happened to Granddad Niall?”
“No one likes to talk about it, you know that.”
“I want to talk about it.”
“And I don’t. Now quit stalling and get up.”
Finn had almost gotten his breath back, but he kept up the heavy panting to get a couple more moments’ rest.
“Maybe I won’t fight them when my time comes,” he said.
“What?”
“Maybe it’s the fighting that keeps the Legends coming, you know,” said Finn, a clamminess rising in him as he realized he was treading on thin ice. “Maybe talking to them isn’t such a bad idea.”
“Which part of ‘no one likes to talk about it’ is hard for you to understand?”
“Maybe we can learn something from it.”
His dad squatted down to stare directly at Finn, holding his gaze until Finn’s eyes began to want to jump out of their sockets and run away. Finally, his father spoke. “What my father did is not something I will ever be allowed to forget, no matter how hard I try. That’s all the lesson we need to learn.” He offered Finn a hand up. “Now let’s get fighting again.”
“Is this going to be needed, though?” asked Finn. “The gateways are dying out. They’ll be gone from here too eventually. Besides, we have Desiccators. Why do I need to learn this stuff?”
“You might have noticed that the Legends aren’t gone yet.”
“Then why do they keep attacking here and nowhere else?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
Finn took a moment to ponder this. “I think I’ve scared the bigger ones away.”
His father grinned at that, held out a hand, and helped Finn to his feet. Then he jumped back. “Okay, buster, wrestle me.”
Finn’s sigh of annoyance was lost in the clatter of an alarm rattling through the building. That noise had been the soundtrack to Finn’s life—the signal that a gateway had opened somewhere in Darkmouth.
“Excellent,” said his father, perking up immediately. “Who needs training when we have a live Legend to help us out? Besides, if we get into trouble, you can just give the Legend the look you’re giving me now. That’ll scare it.”
Finn bit hard on his lower lip.
His father grinned. “Yep, that’s the one.”
14
Broonie walked through the gate and emerged into a world of rain.
What he noticed first was not the scenery, but the air. It had a purity that was invigorating. At least, it had a purity once he sniffed his way past the many impurities that were layered over it: fatty foods, burned fuels, seaweed, decaying flowers, all overlaid by tons of perfume-doused sweat. It carried in the breeze and through the light rain.
But, underneath all that, the air was so fresh that he wanted to drink it.
Everywhere he looked there was a vibrancy that he had never experienced. Each color was divided into shade upon shade—even the grays exploded across a spectrum.
This was the Promised World. This was what centuries of war had been waged over. He understood it now.
He was on a Darkmouth street. So orderly, he thought. Flowers growing from baskets in the air: novel. Numbers on doors: curious. The ground is painted with rectangles and vehicles are abandoned in them. Odd.
Broonie felt grubby in his dull
rags crusted with his own blood. He saw that he was covered in a fine layer of dust that seemed resistant to the rain. Instead, it shed from him as he nervously shuffled on the spot, trying to decide what he had to do next. He had been told his mission. He still didn’t understand exactly what it was.
“When you see them, you can attack,” the Fomorians had said.
“Attack?”
“Attack.”
“Shouldn’t I take a bigger weapon with me?” he had asked, holding up the small knife they had given him.
“Your best weapon is your ingenuity,” they told him.
“While I appreciate the compliment, I’m not sure it will be entirely sufficient to—”
At which point a boot had kicked him through the rippling gateway.
There was an incessant ache where his finger had been removed and clumsily replaced with a new digit made of crystal. It already felt loose at the knuckle. Even in his disbelief and pain, he was annoyed at the Fomorians’ shoddy workmanship.
An older human in a headscarf crossed his path, pulling some kind of square bag filled with provisions. When she saw him, she screamed and scuttled away, leaving her bag to spill at his feet. Broonie rummaged through its contents. He was desperately hungry, and slurped from a carton of milk, then bit into an egg and sucked out its contents. They tasted so fresh he shuddered in delight. He rifled through the bag some more and recoiled. Inside a clear package was meat. Bloody. Sliced neatly.
These people must be more vicious than it is taught. Even the elders carry the raw parts of their prey.
It was time to run.
He struggled through Darkmouth’s maze of dead ends and blind alleys, continually failing to find a clear path.
Turning onto a wide street, he ran into a bustle of humans moving through the town. One noticed him and his shriek alerted the others. A small hairy animal at the end of a leash went wild, straining and snarling until Broonie thrust his knife at it, pricking the creature in the paw so that it squealed and withdrew, bleeding.
Its owner kicked at him and Broonie stabbed impulsively at him too, nicking his ankle before jumping backward into the road where there was a horrible squeal of machinery as an oncoming metal vehicle braked only an ear hair’s width from his face.
Adrenaline coursing through his raised black veins, Broonie darted through the nearest doorway to crouch inside its large window while he tried to figure out an escape route. Outside, the scene was chaotic. Some ran off right away, while others stopped first to stare at him with mounting disgust before following the others.
Broonie became aware of something above him. And behind him. And around him.
Carcasses, stripped down to their flesh, hung on sharp hooks. Torn and cut and placed on display. Ribs, livers, tongues, all manner of sliced hunks of animals were neatly laid out behind a glass partition. Broonie guessed they must be the fresh kills of the fat human currently standing behind the glass counter in a bloodstained apron, with one hand on a large cleaver and the other on a half-sliced body laid out on a table beside him.
If Broonie had opened his eyes any wider, they would have popped out and rolled across the floor to the butcher’s feet.
On the street, there was the squeal of metal and a great roar, and another vehicle arrived through the crowd of humans that was heading in the opposite direction. A figure emerged from it, tall and imposing, fully armored and wielding a gun.
Broonie immediately knew who this was. The Legend Hunter.
“A Hogboon,” he heard the Hunter say clearly. “Hardly a challenge, especially if it’s carrying little more than an apple peeler.”
Broonie sprang at the butcher, wincing at the blood smeared on his clothes, and wrapped himself tightly around his head, grasping firmly at the man’s face until he dropped the cleaver with a clang. Broonie then slid down onto the human’s shoulders, holding his bloodied knife to the butcher’s neck as the Legend Hunter burst into the shop, gun raised.
“Hugo . . . ,” whimpered the butcher.
“Don’t worry, Leo, we’ll soon have this sorted.”
From his dry throat, Broonie summoned the best rasp he could. “You’re a cruel species. Let me go or I will show you how cruel I can be too.”
“You want me to drop this Desiccator?”
“Now,” said Broonie, pulling tighter on the knife. His fear of having to carry through with his threat was outweighed by the thought of his insides hanging in this window while his outsides spent the rest of eternity as a comfortable pair of shoes.
“If I put it down, you won’t hurt this man?” asked the Legend Hunter.
“On the rotting soul of my uncle.”
“I’ll drop my weapon.” He bent down and placed it on the ground. “But on one condition.”
“Which is?”
“That you look behind you.”
Broonie glanced around. There, at a back door, was another armored human, much smaller, far less imposing, but with a weapon pointed right at his head.
“The boy?” muttered the Hogboon just as a large piece of meat struck him in the side of the head and sent him crashing to the ground, the knife slipping from his grasp. The butcher barged out of the door to safety.
The Legend Hunter stood over Broonie, Desiccator pointed at him.
There was a blip from somewhere. Then another. Blip. Blip.
Realizing the sound was coming from somewhere on him, the Legend Hunter patted his fighting suit until he found a pocket containing a rectangular device, which he pulled out and examined.
“The scanner’s identified another open gateway, over by the harbor.” Silence. No blip. “Hold on, it’s gone again. Odd. Anyway, where were we?”
The boy joined the Legend Hunter, standing over Broonie too, lifting his visor for a better look.
“He looks hurt, Dad.”
“Of course he’s hurt, Finn.”
“Should we help him?”
“Help him? Help him? We shoot him,” insisted the Legend Hunter, sounding exasperated.
“But he’s just lying there,” said the boy.
“So, what, we bring him home for tea and biscuits? No, we desiccate him. You desiccate him. Here’s your chance for a first confirmed hunt.”
The boy looked pained. “That just doesn’t feel right.”
“Stop babbling, Finn, and do it.”
“Wait!” interjected Broonie.
The humans focused on him. Broonie pointed at the boy, calmed himself, and recited the words he had been given. “I have a message,” he said. “The Legends are rising. The boy shall fall.”
Then the Legend Hunter shot him.
15
Finn saw it at the same time his father did. A diamond, spinning to a stop beside the hard leather ball that had only seconds before been a Hogboon. This one was smaller than the one Finn had picked up after his encounter with the Minotaur, but sharper.
His father casually tossed the ball of Legend to Finn, who juggled it before getting a hold against his chest, then punched in the code for a container he was holding and placed it inside. In the meantime, his father had picked up the diamond and was quietly examining it.
“What was that?” asked Finn.
“Some kind of diamond,” his father replied slowly.
“No. I mean, what did he say? About me?”
“He didn’t say anything about you.”
“Yes, he did. He looked at me and said ‘the boy.’ He wasn’t looking at you at the time. It was definitely me. And he said I would fall.”
“It was about all of us.”
“No, it was as if he recognized me.”
“Maybe you’re a big celebrity on the Infested Side,” said his dad. “He probably got you in the Legend Hunters collector cards. It was just a trick, Finn. A delaying tactic. Give these Legends a hand and they’ll take an arm.”
They both knew this was literally so in the infamous case of Graham the One-Armed.
Broonie’s knife—a harmless piece, barely capabl
e of slicing paper—remained where it had fallen. Finn picked it up and handed it to his father, who was hardly interested in it.
“That doesn’t matter. This diamond is more important,” his father said, studying it. “You saw the Desiccator swallow him pretty well, didn’t you? So why was this left behind?”
“He must have dodged at the last moment.”
“I couldn’t have been closer to him. He didn’t move.”
Finn shrugged, dropped his gaze, tried not to betray what he already knew. The Minotaur had been hit full-on by the Desiccator and a crystal had been left behind there too. He should have told his dad at the time. He should tell him now. But he reckoned his father would desiccate him on the spot if he knew he’d been hiding a precious stone from the Infested Side in his underpants drawer.
“This,” his dad continued, still focusing on the jewel, “is the first thing I’ve ever seen survive the Desiccator net intact. It was definitely on his hand. I spotted it, where his little finger should have been, but just presumed it was some sort of decoration. Hogboons are thieving little beggars. He must have lost the finger at some point and used this as an artificial one.”
“You’re sure it’s a diamond?” asked Finn.
His father turned it over in his hand.
“I don’t know, Finn. But there’s someone who will.”
16
The shop was hidden down one of Darkmouth’s narrowest alleyways. Finn had been there before, but not since he was younger when he would be brought along by his dad and left to wait outside on the step, where weathered paint peeled from the shop front in sharp, fat flakes. Finn had never been inside.
The red lettering on the sign over the door was almost, but not entirely, faded. It read:
Specialities? Nothing about the shop looked special from the outside. Its window was caked with grime and anyone peering inside could see that the store was overflowing with odds and ends: parts of old electronics, guts of televisions, remnants of toasters, gaping insides of CD players. The clutter spilled onto the alleyway at the front of the shop, cardboard boxes filled to the brim with tiny fuses, plugs trailing cords, old and worn radios, and ancient phones.
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